The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780520203426)

Richard Leppert boldly examines the social meanings of music as these have been shaped not only by hearing but also by seeing music in performance. His purview is the northern European bourgeoisie, principally in England and the Low Countries, from 1600 to 1900. And his particular interest is the relation of music to the human body. He argues that musical practices, invariably linked to the body, are inseparable from the prevailing discourses of power, knowledge, identity, desire, and sexuality.

With the support of 100 illustrations, Leppert addresses music and the production of racism, the hoarding of musical sound in a culture of scarcity, musical consumption and the policing of gender, the domestic piano and misogyny, music and male anxiety, and the social silencing of music. His unexpected yoking of musicology and art history, in particular his original insights into the relationships between music, visual representation, and the history of the body, make exciting reading for scholars, students, and all those interested in society and the arts.

Author: Richard Leppert
ISBN-10: 0520203429
ISBN-13: 9780520203426
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 10/15/1995
Pages: 345
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.56lbs
Size: 10.02h x 6.86w x 0.88d

About the Author
Richard Leppert is Professor of Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book is Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (1989).